My Yard the Twilight Zone

In my blog description, I claim to write about things flowering in my head, my yard, my life, blah, blah, blah. The yard's been pretty neglected for awhile and for some reason, I feel the need to share now. Last spring, my father-in-law gave me some tomato seedlings. I found out later that these were seedlings that he started from a grocery store tomato's seeds. An heirloom tomato, but a grocery store tomato nonetheless. My father-in-law has a special talent for growing all sorts of things (and, ahem, we're not going to go into that too much) and he also has a fantastic greenhouse. He managed to get a few (I think 3) tomatoes from these particular seeds. I, being possessed of neither gardening superpowers nor a greenhouse, figured my chances for getting tomatoes from these plants were pretty slim. My tomato plants got big and busy, popped out a few flowers, and then started a slow, dramatic death. This is how dramatic:

Somewhere around the first of this month, I decided this was a lost cause and quit watering the plants. Two nights ago, Moses called me outside. This is what he found:

One renegade tomato. A survivor. The little stinker--now I have to water this plant again. After taking into account the price of the pot, the compost, and water for three months, that there is probably the world's most expensive tomato.

Other weird things have been happening in my yard. Apparently in Flagstaff there is this season called Autumn and this is what happens to trees:


Notice that reddish tinge? I understand that shortly the red will prevail, all the leaves will fall off the trees, and I will be plunged into arctic hell until about June 1st of next year.

We also have a bush that produces copious amounts of a beautiful orange berry:

There is some little kid part of me that really wants to pluck one off and pop it into my mouth just to see what it tastes like. Don't worry, I have resisted. Perhaps though, I will find out what these are and see if, perchance they are edible. Mmmm, random-orange-berry jam.